Technology is a weapon. Look no further than the ongoing worries about bulk data collection and the almost weekly accounts of internet frailty. It's this 21st-century digital destructive power that Ubisoft Montreal wanted to explore with its new open-world title. In the Watch Dogs world, the smartphone in your pocket is even more dangerous than the gun in your hand. But the game's central moral dilemma is this: The technology is only as evil as the people who use it.

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Let's get something out of the way. The open world gameplay of Watch Dogs is very reminiscent of, well, other open world games—most notably Rockstar Games' Grand Theft Auto. Even bits of Ubisoft's own Assassin's Creed franchise managed to find its way into the surveilled streets of Chicago. Perhaps unavoidably, Watch Dogs touches on the common ingredients that go into every violent, open world soufflé. There are the run-and-gun missions, a collection of side games, fluid gunplay, auto larceny, and just general mayhem.

But Watch Dogs offers something unique. When we talked with the game's creative director, Jonathan Morin, he mentioned that the team wanted to create a world where people could express themselves differently. "So we focused a lot on making sure you hack everything, control everything, and access every single person's information," he said. The game's hacking mechanic is what makes the game stand out from its sandbox forebears. With the ability to transform a whole city into your marionette, Watch Dogs Ubisoft's new take on the violent genre and makes for a mix of stealthy, frantic, and at times frustrating gameplay.

Watch Dogs opens in the not-so-distant future when a central operating system, known as ctOS, controls every aspect of the city's infrastructure and keeps tabs on all its citizens. Everything is connected: Transportation systems, ATMs, and surveillance cameras all feed information into the system's insatiable maw. Streets are inundated with robotic eyes using facial recognition to profile anyone and everyone. Any information—bank accounts, salaries, illnesses, even dog names—creates a small digital profile of every non-player character in the game.

You play as lead protagonist Aiden Pearce, an anti-hero/super-hacker (basically Batman, but not quite Batman) on a revenge tear to find his niece's killer. Armed with a gun and a smartphone, Aiden hacks Chicago's mainframe and makes it a weapon. Hack your way through locked doors by using multiple surveillance cameras and creating a digital map of the environment. Grab essential key-codes by scanning a security guard's cellphone. Cause a blackout at the touch of a button, or use your trusty smartphone to track your enemies exact location.

Ubisoft made sure this game is not just a Splinter Cell clone by tossing in plenty of high-octane action. In myriad car chases throughout Watch Dogs, Aiden uses hacks to switch the traffic lights signals, causing a multiple-car pileup and creating roadblocks for Chicago's finest (inspired by The Blues Brothers, perhaps?). Even though you're constantly on the run, stick around an accident and notice that NPCs seem to be alive and aware of their surroundings, making real-time decisions that affect gameplay. If they're in a car accident, they argue. Draw your gun, they call the police.

Watch Dogs doesn't exude somber seriousness all the time. The side games are augmented-reality acid trips, with one making Aiden shoot purple people eaters before he's back to hacking, stealing, and blowing stuff up.

Ubisoft's new game engine, named Disrupt, is fantastic. My only frustration is that the driving physics aren't quite right and vehicles feel a little unnatural to drive. For instance, putting on your emergency brake should make the car fishtail, but in Watch Dogs, cars flounder uncontrollably. With the handling so quirky and unresponsive, driving becomes annoying and causes unnecessary environmental damage. Also, vehicles can smash and crash their way through the city, taking a serious beating, but somehow keep going. Nice, but unrealistic.

Bottom Line: Buy It

Watch Dogs has an excellent balance of gadgetry, stealth, action, and side missions. The game has a bright future as a franchise, and it's that future that we're really looking forward to. Sandbox titles have a tendency to excite with the first release, but really perfect with its follow up. Grand Theft Auto III transformed the series from an overhead camera to an immersive, three dimensional angle, but GTA IV improved on the formula. Assassin's Creed is another apt example.

Like those titles, Watch Dogs tried to be different and, for the most part, succeeded. Ubisoft created a world of astonishing detail, and there's no doubt that it looks phenomenal on either the PS4 or Xbox One. Despite its success with creating an exciting new intellectual property, Watch Dogs isn't immune from a few frustrations created by wonky mechanics, cliché characters, and a somewhat stale narrative. Still, when Morin pitched his idea to Ubisoft almost six years ago, he wanted to put the player in control of an entire city with the push of a button and explore the moral gray area that arise from technological omnipotence, and in that respect, Watch Dogs succeeds completely.